Thanks to Chris / CopCarSS for my avatar.
Murph, UTLX has it's own web site. Go to www.utlx.com, click on the "Products Page". Then Click on "Products". Then Click on "Basic Designs and Descriptions". It helps to know the gallon capacity of the car you were looking at. I hope this information is useful to you.
CANADIANPACIFIC2816
"No soup for you!" - Yev Kassem (from Seinfeld)
Appearently it hauls, or hauled, kaolin.http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=671597
ericsp wrote: Appearently it hauls, or hauled, kaolin.http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=671597
She who has no signature! cinscocom-tmw
That large a mass is going to hold its temperature for a while. Can't speak as an industry insider, but IIRC, asphalt is loaded hot, then a steam coil in the car is hooked up to unload it.
I suspect this is the case with most such materials. The only freight cars I've ever been aware of with heaters were reefers (famously the "State of Maine" cars loaded with potatoes). But I could be wrong.
Ms Mook, you can get a copy of the ERG right on your computer.
Larry Resident Microferroequinologist (at least at my house) Everyone goes home; Safety begins with you My Opinion. Standard Disclaimers Apply. No Expiration Date Come ride the rails with me! There's one thing about humility - the moment you think you've got it, you've lost it...
Murphy,
Huber and Thiele are big time suppliers of Kaolin...I cant remember the other name, but there are three big players in the Kaolin clay business.
This clay, as was pointed out, has many varied uses.
Kaolin is mined in Kentucky, and other regions.
When dry it forms a fine, very white powder.
It is used in porcelain, medium grade china, as a coating on better grade printer paper, business cards and such, and as a binder in a lot of medicinal uses, like for pills and such.
Ever take Kaopectate for diarrhea?
It is nothing more than Kaolin clay suspended in a pectin( the stuff Jell-O is made out of) solution, but it works really well.
What is in the tank cars in the linked photo is Kaolin clay in a water/clay solution, on its way to either a medicine manufacturer, a paper maker, or a company that produces porcelain, dinner plates, cups...all the way to sinks, toilets, and it is even used as the porcelain coating on cast iron bath tubs.
In its original form and as a slurry, it is usually gray or cream colored, once fired, it turns a brilliant white...it is fired, then ground to a fine powder and used to make many common pills...as a powder mixed with the powdered medicine and stamped into pills, you probably have over your lifetime eaten a lot of Kentucky clay!
As for your original question, besides the Kaolin product, a lot of "shortie" tank cars you see are used to carry heavy acids used in the manufacturing of a lot of chemicals, and there is a fleet of them used to haul metal alkyds...don't have the cars number series, but Carl knows which one I refer to...
Often, it isn't the weight of the chemical that determines the car size, but the amount needed by the receiver...they may not need the amount a large "standard" tank car holds, so they ship it in the smaller cars.
Lubrizol gets a lot of the shorties into their specialty lube plant.
Kaolin is shipped in these smaller cars because of its weight.
Murphy Siding wrote: Today I saw a little tank car on a siding. I say little, because it was in among some ethanol cars, and looked to be about 1/2 the size of them. I presume whatever is hauled in this type car is relatively heavy. The car was UTLX 24827. Does anybody know what this car is made to haul? Thanks
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Mookie wrote:Thanx Tree - I bookmarked it. Houston Ed gave me a book, but it is in the door on the driver's side in Millie. Not something I carry in my purse. This will help!
Heck - It's just a big PDF file. I downloaded it to my computer. Why wait for the network?
tree68 wrote: Mookie wrote:Thanx Tree - I bookmarked it. Houston Ed gave me a book, but it is in the door on the driver's side in Millie. Not something I carry in my purse. This will help!Heck - It's just a big PDF file. I downloaded it to my computer. Why wait for the network?
Murphy Siding wrote: It was gone this morning. We're on an out of the way BNSF main, that connects grain elevators and ethanol plants with the rest of the world. I think of us as the outback of American railroading.
It was probably set out for a minor repair, Murphy the BNSF runs it's Twin Cities to Kansas City freights via your corner of South Dakota, its possible that the car came from the NS at Memphis and is going to the Pacific Northwest or Canada. Also Kaolin is coming from South America in addition to plants in the SE United States.
T'anks, Norris, for giving the number. Virtually all of the UTLX 24000-series tank cars were built at about the same time (1980s, I'm pretty sure) for handling clay slurry or limestone slurry. They had several different lessees, and were usually in paint jobs that featured the logos of their lessees: ECC Americas, J. M. Huber, Nord Kaolin, Thiele Kaolin, and OMYA, Inc., were the ones I'd see most often.
If the car was painted white, it's probably still in some sort of slurry service. There has been quite a bit of shakeout in the clay business, and it's hard to tell who the major players are any more.
However, I've seen a number of cars from this series (cars that I can confirm had been used in slurry service) that are now painted black and used in phosphoric acid service. As Eric points out, sodium hydroxide (or potassium hydroxide) are also possibilities for cars of this size.
Carl
Railroader Emeritus (practiced railroading for 46 years--and in 2010 I finally got it right!)
CAACSCOCOM--I don't want to behave improperly, so I just won't behave at all. (SM)
What would limestone slurry be used for? I'm still trying to find a local tie to the car.
It may very well have ended up here for a repair of some sort, but the main from Minneapolis to Kansas City is actually 20 miles away. A more plausible thought, is that a damaged car would have been put out at Garretson, S.D., where the local line connects.
alcodave wrote:A little of topic,but it refers to tankcars. I would like some info on LPG propane tank cars. How are they unloaded and what sizes do they come in? i mostly see the 33,000 gallon type I was wondering if they come any smaller. And what type of customers recieve them. do they go to small propane dealers or mostly large distrubution centers or utilities? Thanks for any info!
I have not seen anything smaller than a 33,000 gallon LPG tank car for many years. For the sake of efficiency, shippers tend to build cars to handle the maximum capacity allowable given the weight of the commodity. (If corn syrup and sulfuric acid were not so heavy, the cars that carry these two products would be larger for sure).
As to their destination, I have seen commercial distribution facilities in both large cities and small towns. Here's a site with pictures of the unloading gantry and other info: www.lgaengineering.com
Here in Arizona we have a storage facility that receives and holds excess LPG during the warmer months and ships it out in the fall and winter. It is a natural, underground salt dome. There is a similar dome at Herscher, Illinois, used for the same purpose.
John Timm
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